PRONUNCIATION IN SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING

PRONUNCIATION IN

SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING

AND TEACHING

Conference Dates and Location

September 19-21, 2013

Iowa State University

Ames, Iowa, USA

5th Annual Proceedings

EDITORS

John Levis, Iowa State University

Shannon McCrocklin, University of Texas Pan American

PRONUNCIATION IN SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING

5th Annual Proceedings

Table&of&Contents

Turning the Corner........................................................................................................................... 1

John Levis, Iowa State University

Shannon McCrocklin, University of Texas Pan-American

Intelligibility

An instrumental account of the intelligibility of [ʌ] in seven varieties of L2 Englishes. ............. 11

Ettien Koffi, St. Cloud State University

Final stops or not? The importance of final consonants for an intelligible accent. ....................... 22

Elisabeth Zetterholm, Linnaeus University

Instructional approaches

Dictation programs for pronunciation learner empowerment. ...................................................... 30

Shannon McCrocklin, University of Texas Pan American

Listening and pronunciation need separate models of speech. ...................................................... 40

Richard Cauldwell, Speech in Action, Birmingham, UK

Comparing online vs. face-to-face classes: A case study of a French pronunciation class. ......... 45

Anne Violin-Wigent, Michigan State University

Fair Dinkum. L2 Spanish pronunciation in Australia by the book. .............................................. 58

William Steed (James Cook University)

Manuel Delicado Cantero (Australian National University)

Descriptive approaches to L2 pronunciation

Different stress patterns met: Kurdish L1 speakers learn Swedish. .............................................. 68

Elisabeth Zetterholm, Linnaeus University

Mechtild Tronnier, Lund University

Detecting L2 speech deviations by a communicative experiment procedure:

Cantonese speakers’ realizations of English /r/. ............................................................................ 75

Yizhou Lan, City University of Hong Kong

Japanese epenthetic vowels: How Japanese speakers pronounce English words. ......................... 87

Shinichi Shoji, University of South Carolina

The acoustic correlates of stress-shifting suffixes in native and nonnative English .................... 104

Paul Keyworth, St. Cloud State University

New approaches

Pronunciation characteristics of Japanese speakers’ English:

A preliminary corpus-based study. .............................................................................................. 120

Takehiko Makino, Chuo University, Tokyo

What is identity? ELL and Bilinguals' views on the role of accent. ........................................... 137

Shannon McCrocklin, University of Texas Pan American,

Stephanie Link, Iowa State University

Teaching Tips

Using introductions to improve initial intelligibility.................................................................... 145

Greta Muller Levis, Iowa State University

John Levis, Iowa State University

Introducing French nasal vowels at the beginner level: A demystification ................................. 151

Viviane Ruellot, Western Michigan University

“Flipping” the phonetics classroom. A practical guide................................................................ 156

Anita Saalfeld, University of Nebraska at Omaha

Intelligible accented speakers as pronunciation models. ............................................................. 172

Colleen Meyers, University of Minnesota

Using tongue twisters to supplement beginning level CFL students’

pronunciation and tone practice. ................................................................................................. 177

Shenglan Zhang, Iowa State University

Effective pronunciation instruction in basic language classrooms: A modular approach ........... 183

Ashley Roccamo, The University of Southern California

The English syllable: Big news, bad news, and its importance for intelligibility........................ 190

Marnie Reed, Boston University

Levis, J., & McCrocklin, S. (2014). Turning a Corner. In J. Levis & S. McCrocklin (Eds).

Proceedings of the 5th Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching

Conference (pp. 1-10). Ames, IA: Iowa State University.

Pronunciation!in!Second!Language!Learning!and!Teaching!5 1

Turning a Corner

John Levis, Iowa State University

Shannon McCrocklin, University of Texas, Pan American

After a year away, the 5th Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching

Conference returned to Iowa State University on September 19-21, 2013. The theme was

Pronunciation in the Language Teaching Curriculum. The conference drew 125

participants from 18 countries and 15 US states. From the perspective of many at the

conference, it was the best yet in terms of quality and variety of the sessions, and in terms

of opportunities to network. The conference seems to have turned a corner. It is a

conference that many L2 pronunciation researchers now see as essential for learning

about the latest research and for connecting to other researchers in the field. The

conference has grown to include a focus on a wide variety of languages with sessions on

German, Chinese, Spanish, French, Japanese and Swedish, as well as English at last

year’s conference. Although English-focused sessions still dominate overall numbers

(perhaps not surprising for a North America based conference), the greater number of

languages considered in the conference is critical for the field, which needs to consider

important questions about L2

pronunciation from the perspective of

many languages.

Lynda Yates (chair of the Department of

Linguistics, Macquarie University,

Australia) gave the plenary address on

Friday morning. The title was Learning

how to speak: Pronunciation,

pragmatics and practicalities in the

classroom and beyond. The abstract for

her talk is included below. For the second

year in a row, the plenary talk was not

written in full for the conference

proceedings. This is actually a good thing,

since Lynda’s plenary is instead being

published by Language Teaching

(Cambridge University Press), one of the

top journals in the field. The confidence of Language Teaching’s editor, Graeme Porte, in

the growing influence and quality of PSLLT is evident by his asking our plenary speakers

to submit their papers two years in a row. We would loved to have included her talk in

our own proceedings, but their talks (and our conference) will have a much higher profile

in the pages of Language Teaching.

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Pronunciation!in!Second!Language!Learning!and!Teaching!5 2

Plenary Abstract

It is beyond dispute that learners who want to develop good speaking skills in a

language also need to develop good pronunciation, and yet research continues to

report that pronunciation still has low visibility in the curriculum and is often

treated as something of a poor relation in the classroom. Many teachers are still

wary of pronunciation as a specialist area that is somehow separate from the other

skills necessary for successful communication - an isolationist tendency that can

make its consequent neglect in the curriculum and in teacher training programs

only too easy.

In this plenary I go back to basics and focus on what it is that learners need to do

outside the classroom with the language they are learning. Drawing on studies

that have explored the lives and communicative needs of immigrants and

international students, I will illustrate not only the importance of pronunciation in

their lives, but also its close interrelationship with other spoken skills. I will then

consider the implications for how we approach the teaching of pronunciation

proactively as part of developing students’ repertoire of speaking skills in the

classroom and beyond.

The conference also included a pre-conference workshop,

Models, metaphors, and the evidence of spontaneous speech:

A new relationship for pronunciation and listening. Presented

by Richard Cauldwell of speechinaction, the workshop presented

a new approach to listening based on the reality and messiness of

normal connected speech. Approximately 40 people attended the

full-day workshop. The workshop description is reproduced

below.

Pre-Conference Workshop

This workshop has the goal of improving the teaching of listening, by identifying

and exploiting a new relationship between pronunciation activities and listening

goals. New concepts and techniques (both high- and low-tech) will be illustrated.

Participants will leave the workshop with new ideas to consider, and activities to

use immediately in the classroom. The workshop will begin with thought￾provoking theory, and end with the ruthlessly practical: but throughout there will

be a constant reference to the evidence of recordings of spontaneous speech, and

continual opportunities for suggestions and questions from participants.

Rationale

For pronunciation and speaking, we encourage clear intelligible speech. We

present learners with a model of speech which is built around dictionary

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Pronunciation!in!Second!Language!Learning!and!Teaching!5 3

pronunciations (citation forms) and rules of connected speech. We can think of

the citation forms as greenhouse plants – they are isolated forms preceded and

followed by a pause, with their component parts – vowels, consonants, syllables

and stresses, all clearly present. The rules of connected speech – linking, elision,

sentence stress, etc - can be thought of as guidelines for transplanting and

arranging greenhouse plants into orderly pleasing arrangements in a garden.

However, the greenhouse forms and the gardening guidelines are not appropriate

for teaching listening. This is because the speech that learners encounter outside

the classroom is more like jungle vegetation than garden or greenhouse plants,

much wilder than the forms they encounter in the classroom. Such speech

contains phenomena which are rarely seen in textbooks and words, like vegetation

in the jungle, are blended into their neighbours in ways which are not predicted by

the rules of connected speech. They are squeezed into bursts of the stream of

speech, and it becomes difficult to recognise where one word begins and another

ends, or indeed whether word-endings, syllables, or whole words have occurred at

all. In class, we need to prepare students for their encounters with jungle listening,

while continuing to promote intelligible pronunciation. This workshop will

describe and explore ways of working on these separate but related goals.

Workshop Timetable

Part 1: Models and metaphors -The goals of listening and pronunciation are

different. We need different models of speech for each goal. We have good

models in place for pronunciation, we have inadequate models for teaching

listening. We need to distinguish between goals and pronunciation activities can

serve the goal of listening.

Part 2: Evidence from spontaneous speech -Words have many different

soundshapes, of which the citation form is only one. The soundshapes are formed

by interactions between the language and speaker factors: gender, accent, choices

of speed, prominence and clarity.

Part 3: High-tech solutions: computers, smartphones, tablets, etc. - Recent

developments in technology enable us to examine what happens to words in the

stream of speech, to compare how words sound different as speakers and contexts

change. We can manipulate and play with the sound substance of speech, in ways

which promote faster learning of the listening skill.

Part 4: Low-tech solutions: teachers and learners voices in the classroom -The

teacher voice and student voices can together be used in class to create, savour

and handle the sound substance of the stream of speech. We will look at a number

of activities that can be used and adapted to different teaching contexts.

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Pronunciation!in!Second!Language!Learning!and!Teaching!5 4

Sessions

In addition to the plenary and preconference workshop, there were 31 presentations at the

conference, with two concurrent sessions Friday and Saturday. In addition, there were 22

posters, 9 Teaching Tips, and a conference dinner open to all participants. As!the!

Teaching!Tips!presentations!were!put!into!action!for!this!first!time!this!year!and!are!

less!common!at!scholarly!conferences,!they need further explanation. Part of the goal

of PSLLT is to connect practice, research and theory, and this means that both theory and

practice need to be represented in the conference. PSLLT is primarily a research-oriented

conference. It has a wide appeal to researchers from many areas and working in many

languages. This does not mean, however, that the conference does not appeal to language

teachers. Indeed, most participants are language teachers in part of their professional

lives. As a result, we started the Teaching Tips Roundtable based on an idea John got

from a Speech colleague. At the annual national conference for Speech Communication

professionals, she told him that there is a section titled “My Great Idea” for teaching the

basic course in speech. Since this started, it has become one of the best-attended sessions

of the conference and provides an opportunity for presenters who are more teaching￾oriented to show what they do and to connect theory and practice. We stole the idea and

tried it at PSLLT. Each presenter sat at a round table with 9 chairs. For 10 minutes, they

demonstrated their teaching tip to a full table, giving out a handout and taking questions

with any extra time. Then a bell rang and everyone was free to go to another table. Each

presenter then had a new table of participants for another 10 minutes. Teaching Tip

presenters did this 7 times during the Roundtable session, and participants were able to

go to 7 different teaching tips. The session got some of the highest ratings of any during

the conference. The schedule and titles of presentations, posters and teaching tips is given

below.

Friday, September 20th

8:00-8:50am Registration (Cardinal Room)

9:00-9:10 Welcome (Cardinal Room)

9:10-10:10 Plenary Address by Lynda Yates (Cardinal Room)

10:10-10:30 Break

Cardinal Room Gold Room

10:30-10:55 Erin Zimmerman

Teaching the Teachers: How Do

Pronunciation Textbooks Aid

Inexperienced

Teachers’ Pedagogy?

Murray Munro

What do you know when you

“know” an L2 vowel?

11:00-11:25 Sinem Sonsaat & Stephanie Link

How do nonnative teachers use

pronunciation materials?

Implications for materials

development

Ron Thomson

Does vowel learning in one

context generalize to other

contexts?

11:30-11:55 Ashley Rocammo

Learning Pronunciation in Just

Ten Minutes a Day: Adapting

Ettien Koffi

Assessment of the Intelligibility of

[ ʌ ] in Seven Varieties of L2

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Pronunciation Training to a Four￾Skills German Classroom

Englishes

12:00-1:50 Working Box Lunch (Provided in Pioneer Room)

12:30-1:50 Posters: Pioneer Room

S. Alexander -Intonation and perceived sincerity in EFL and ESL learner

apologies

J. Barcroft & M. Sommers – Better L2 pronunciation is one of the many

benefits of acoustically varied input

C. Barrett – Laying a foundation for rhythm-based pronunciation

instruction

C. Cárdenas- Scaphoning your language

S. Chibani- Pronunciation teaching in Algeria: From stagnation to progress

L. Cai – An efficient method to build up native sounds in Chinese

teaching: Multi-sensory and multi-cognitive approaches

M. Delicado Cantero & W. Steed – Fair Dinkum: L2 Spanish in Australia by

the book

F. Desmeules-Trudel- VISC effects on the perception of Quebec French

nasal vowels by Brazilian learners

N. Driscoll – Hatsuon Help: a research-based, culturally-sensitive English

pronunciation website for Japanese ELLs

V. Gonzalez Lopez & D. Counselman- The production and perception of

Spanish voiceless stops by novice learners: shedding light on early L2

category formation

S. Halicki – Back door phonetic conditioning: Accent therapy in early

French pronunciation training

Y. Lan – Detecting L2 speech deviations by a communicative experiment

procedure: taking Cantonese speakers’ realizations of English [r] as an

example

S. Link, S. Sonsaat, & J. Levis – Confidence in teaching pronunciation:

How native and nonnative teachers negotiate the pronunciation

classroom

W. McCartan – Word stress diagnostic procedure shared through a wiki

site

C. Nagle - Acquisition of the voicing contrast in L2 Spanish

D. Olson & H. Offerman- The effects of visual feedback on learner

pronunciation: Speech analysis software in the L2 classroom

L. Pierce – Multi-methodological, cross-disciplinary approaches to

pronunciation teaching

S. Shoji – Japanese epenthetic vowels: How Japanese speakers

pronounce English words

K. Taylor de Caballero & S. Thompson- Coloring pronunciation across the

curriculum with the Color Vowel Chart

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Pronunciation!in!Second!Language!Learning!and!Teaching!5 6

H. Yang – Investigating needs of stakeholders of an oral proficiency test

for ITAs to bridge the gaps between ITAs’ needs and raters’ feedback.

E. Zetterholm – Final stops or not? The importance of final consonants for

an intelligible accent.

E. Zetterholm & M. Tronnier – Different stress patterns meet: Kurdish L1

speakers learn Swedish

Cardinal Room Gold Room

2:00- 2:25 Larissa Buss

Beliefs and Practices of Brazilian

EFL Teachers Regarding

Pronunciation

Takehiko Makino

Pronunciation Characteristics of

Japanese Speakers’ English: A

Preliminary Corpus-Based Study

2:30-2:55 Veronica Sardegna

Non-Native Teachers’ Identity

Formation as Qualified

Pronunciation Teachers

John Esling

The two-part model of the

vocal tract: a new articulatory

basis for phonetics

3:00-3:25 John Levis, Stephanie Link,

Sinem Sonsaat, Taylor Anne

Barriuso

Native and nonnative teachers

of pronunciation: Does

language background make a

difference in learner

performance?

Jessica Sturm

Effects of Instruction on Voice

Onset Time in word-initial /p/ for

L1 American English students: A

Preliminary Study

3:30-3:55 Break

Cardinal Room Gold Room

4:00-4:25 Shannon McCrocklin – Dictation

Programs for Pronunciation Learner

Empowerment

Jacques Koreman, Olaf Husby,

E. Albertsen, P. Wik, A.

Øvregaard, & S. Nefzaoui

L1 variation in foreign language

teaching: challenges and

solutions

4:30-4:55 Joan Sereno, Larry Lammers, &

Allard Jongman

Perception of foreign-accented

speech

Patricia Watts, Amanda

Huensch, & Lisa Pierce

Attainable Targets for L2

Learners: How Proficient L2

Speakers can Bridge the Gap

6:00 Conference Dinner at St. Johns (See Map & Directions on Page 37)

Saturday, September 21st

8:30-9:00 Registration (Cardinal Room)

9:00-10:30 Teaching Tips Round Robin (Cardinal Room)

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C. Keppie - From Mirrors to Mouthwash: Instructional Approaches to

Teaching Pronunciation

G.M. Levis & J. Levis – Using introductions to improve initial intelligibility

C. Meyers- Intelligible Accented Speakers as Pronunciation Models

A. Saalfeld - Flipping the phonetics classroom

M. Reed - The English syllable: Big news, bad news, and why it's important

for intelligibility

M. Richards- Providing individualized homework and accountability for

ITAs via Internet and LMS resources

A. Roccamo - Effective Pronunciation Instruction in Beginner and

Intermediate Language Classrooms

V. Ruellot - Introducing French Nasal Vowels at the Beginner Level

S. Zhang - Using Tongue Twisters to Supplement CFL students’

Pronunciation and Tone Practice

10:30-10:55 Break

Cardinal Room Gold Room

11:00-11:25 Anne Violin-Wigent

Comparing online vs. face-to￾face classes: A case study of a

French pronunciation class

Talia Isaacs, Jennifer Foote, &

Pavel Trofimovich

Drawing on teachers’ perceptions

to adapt and refine a

pedagogically-oriented

comprehensibility scale for use on

university campuses

11:30-11:55 Jennifer Foote & G. Smith

Is there an App for that? An

investigation of pronunciation

teaching apps

Murray Munro, Tracey Derwing,

Ron Thomson, & Diane Elliot

Naturalistic L2 Segment

Development: Implications for

Pedagogy

12:00-12:30 Moonyoung Park & Sarah

Huffman

The Potential of ASR for Non￾native English Speakers in Air

Traffic Control

Beth Zielinski

Demystifying comprehensibility for

the language teaching curriculum

12:30-2:00 Lunch (not provided)

Cardinal Room Gold Room

2:00- 2:25 Yuan Zhuang

Suprasegmentals and second

language teaching: A meta￾analysis

Marnie Reed

Connecting pronunciation to

listening: Raising learner and

instructor awareness

2:30-2:55 Okim Kang & F. Chowdhury

Prosodic Features in L2

Mari Sakai & Christine Moorman

Can perceptual training improve

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Pronunciation!in!Second!Language!Learning!and!Teaching!5 8

Accented Speech: Human

versus Machine

production of L2 phones? A meta￾analytic review

3:00-3:25 Shelley Staples

Prosodic patterns in nurse￾patient interactions: a

comparison of international

and U.S. nurses

Richard Cauldwell

Pronunciation and Listening, the

need for two separate models of

speech

3:30-3:55 Break

Cardinal Room Gold Room

4:00-4:25 Ghinwa Alameen

Perception and production of

Linking in Non-Native Speakers of

English

Shannon McCrocklin & Stephanie

Link

What is identity? ESL and Bilinguals'

Views on the Role of Accent

4:30-4:55 Paul Keyworth

The Acoustic Correlates of

Stress-shifting Suffixes in Native

and Nonnative English

Christina Shea & Jennifer Vojtko

Rubi

Dialect adaptation and L2

Spanish listeners

5:00-5:30 Closing (Cardinal Room)

The 5th Annual Proceedings

The PSLLT Proceedings this year features 20 papers. Because L2 pronunciation is

becoming a hotter topic and many journals are publishing papers that feature L2

pronunciation, a large number of presenters told us that they were planning to submit

their papers to peer-refereed journals, including the new Journal of Second Language

Pronunciation (John Benjamins), a journal that is a direct outgrowth of the PSLLT

conference and its electronic proceedings. This is good news. Established peer-reviewed

journals have high impact on the field, and the goal of the proceedings has always been to

increase the impact of L2 pronunciation research. This seems to be happening, and we are

happy that the proceedings are being joined by a larger number of publications on L2

pronunciation.

Proceedings papers come from the presentations, posters and Teaching Tips. Seven of the

proceedings papers are from the Teaching Tips section. There is no clear venue for such

papers, and we are especially pleased to make the write-ups from these very popular

sessions available to the field.

Levis!and!McCrocklin Turning!a!Corner

Pronunciation!in!Second!Language!Learning!and!Teaching!5 9

PRONUNCIATION IN SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING

5th Annual Proceedings

Table&of&Contents

Turning the Corner........................................................................................................................... 1

John Levis, Iowa State University

Shannon McCrocklin, University of Texas Pan-American

Intelligibility

An instrumental account of the intelligibility of [ʌ] in seven varieties of L2 Englishes. ............. 11

Ettien Koffi, St. Cloud State University

Final stops or not? The importance of final consonants for an intelligible accent. ....................... 22

Elisabeth Zetterholm, Linnaeus University

Instructional approaches

Dictation programs for pronunciation learner empowerment. ...................................................... 30

Shannon McCrocklin, University of Texas Pan American

Listening and pronunciation need separate models of speech. ...................................................... 40

Richard Cauldwell, Speech in Action, Birmingham, UK

Comparing online vs. face-to-face classes: A case study of a French pronunciation class. ......... 45

Anne Violin-Wigent, Michigan State University

Fair Dinkum. L2 Spanish pronunciation in Australia by the book. .............................................. 58

William Steed (James Cook University)

Manuel Delicado Cantero (Australian National University)

Descriptive approaches to L2 pronunciation

Different stress patterns met: Kurdish L1 speakers learn Swedish. .............................................. 68

Elisabeth Zetterholm, Linnaeus University

Mechtild Tronnier, Lund University

Detecting L2 speech deviations by a communicative experiment procedure:

Cantonese speakers’ realizations of English /r/. ............................................................................ 75

Yizhou Lan, City University of Hong Kong

Japanese epenthetic vowels: How Japanese speakers pronounce English words. ......................... 87

Shinichi Shoji, University of South Carolina

The acoustic correlates of stress-shifting suffixes in native and nonnative English .................... 104

Paul Keyworth, St. Cloud State University

Levis!and!McCrocklin Turning!a!Corner

Pronunciation!in!Second!Language!Learning!and!Teaching!5 10

New approaches

Pronunciation characteristics of Japanese speakers’ English:

A preliminary corpus-based study. .............................................................................................. 120

Takehiko Makino, Chuo University, Tokyo

What is identity? ELL and Bilinguals' views on the role of accent. ........................................... 137

Shannon McCrocklin, University of Texas Pan American,

Stephanie Link, Iowa State University

Teaching Tips

Using introductions to improve initial intelligibility.................................................................... 145

Greta Muller Levis, Iowa State University

John Levis, Iowa State University

Introducing French nasal vowels at the beginner level: A demystification ................................. 151

Viviane Ruellot, Western Michigan University

“Flipping” the phonetics classroom. A practical guide................................................................ 156

Anita Saalfeld, University of Nebraska at Omaha

Intelligible accented speakers as pronunciation models. ............................................................. 172

Colleen Meyers, University of Minnesota

Using tongue twisters to supplement beginning level CFL students’

pronunciation and tone practice. ................................................................................................. 177

Shenglan Zhang, Iowa State University

Effective pronunciation instruction in basic language classrooms: A modular approach ........... 183

Ashley Roccamo, Pennsylvania State University

The English syllable: Big news, bad news, and its importance for intelligibility........................ 190

Marnie Reed, Boston University

Future Conferences

The next three conferences are also scheduled. They will be

6th annual conference - September 2014 University of California at Santa Barbara

7th annual conference – October 2015 at Texas A&M, Dallas, Texas

8th annual conference – August or September, 2016, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

For information, go the conference website at www.psllt.org

Koffi, E. (2014). An instrumental account of the intelligibility of [ʌ] in seven varieties of L2

Englishes. In J. Levis & S. McCrocklin (Eds). Proceedings of the 5th Pronunciation in

Second Language Learning and Teaching Conference (pp. 11-21). Ames, IA: Iowa State

University.

Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching 5 11

An Instrumental Account of the Intelligibility of [ʌ]

in Seven Varieties of L2 Englishes

Ettien Koffi, St. Cloud State University

Munro, Flege, and MacKay (1996, p. 328) and Munro and Derwing (2008, p.

493) report the results of perception studies in which they found that [ʌ] was one

of the least well perceived vowels by General American English (GAE) hearers of

L2 Englishes. Exploratory acoustic phonetic studies conducted on seven varieties

of L2 Englishes support their findings in part. Indeed, the vowel [ʌ] in these seven

varieties of L2 Englishes overlaps acoustically with or encroaches on [æ] or [ɑ].

As a result, GAE hearers may have a hard time perceiving [ʌ] accurately.

However, confusion data from Peterson and Barney (1952) and Hillenbrand et al

(1995) also indicate that [ʌ] is among the least well perceived vowels of GAE. It

is perceived accurately 92.2% of the time in Peterson and Barney, and 90.8% of

the time in Hillenbrand et al. The infelicitous perceptions of [ʌ] may be due to the

realignment of vowels in the acoustic vowel space that is going on presently in

GAE. As a result, some other vowels are overlapping with the acoustic vowel

space of [ʌ]. Small (2005, p. 79) notes, for instance, that many participants in his

acoustic phonetic studies confuse [ʊ] and [ʌ]. I contend in this paper that the poor

intelligibility of [ʌ] may have as much to do with the dialect(s) of the

intelligibility judges as with the acoustic production of the L2 talkers.

Furthermore, I contend that researchers can gain greater insights into the

intelligibility of vowels if L2 production data is assessed instrumentally and used

in tandem with confusion data that is already available for GAE and other

accented Englishes. Doing so can help us determine the real sources of the

intelligibility problems with L2-accented production of [ʌ].

Classificatory and Perceptual Difficulties

It is practically impossible to classify the vowel [ʌ] by itself without having to make

a reference to another vowel. Therein lie the production and perception difficulties that

will be addressed in this paper. Fromkin, Rodman and Hyams (2014, p. 206) define [ʌ] as

follows: “The vowel [ʌ] in the word luck [lʌk] is a central vowel pronounced with the

tongue low in the mouth though not as low as with [ɑ].” In this case, [ʌ] is contrasted

with [ɑ]. Ladefoged (2006, pp. 90, 219) also defines [ʌ] by contrasting it with [ɔ] in one

case, and [ɜ] in another case. In the “official” IPA chart, [ʌ] is classified as a back vowel

where it occupies the same position with [ɔ]. These classificatory difficulties are

symptomatic of the perception hurdles that GAE hearers face when they are asked to

render intelligibility judgments on the segment [ʌ] produced by non-native speakers.

Koffi Intelligibility of [ʌ] in L2 Englishes

Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching 5 12

More often than not, they mistake non-native [ʌ] for [ɑ/ɔ] or for [æ]. In this paper,

acoustic measurements of [ʌ] are provided in three dialects of American English and

seven varieties of L2 Englishes to explain why these confusions exist.

Data Collection and Background Information

The data for the acoustic measurements of [ʌ] in L2 Englishes come from Arabic,

Mandarin, Hispanic, Japanese, Korean, Slavic, and Somali speakers of English who were

enrolled in my advanced undergraduate phonetics and my graduate phonology courses.

The data from the three dialects of American English are from Peterson and Barney’s

(1952) classic study of GAE vowels, Hillenbrand et al.’s (1995) replication of their study

for Midwestern English, and Koffi’s (2013) replication of these two studies for the study

of vowels in Central Minnesota. The non-native speaking participants in this study were

asked to produce the same eleven words that native speakers of American English

produced in the three studies mentioned above. The words are: hid, heed, hayed, head,

had, who’d, hood, hoed, hawed, hod, and hud. Each word was produced three times. The

words were recorded on laptop computers with built in microphones. Approval was

obtained from the Institutional Review Board prior to the beginning of the study. The

number of participants varies greatly, from three in the case of Slavic speakers to more

than twenty in the case of Central Minnesota speakers.

The vowel [ʌ] is worth singling out for study for three main reasons. First, it is a high

frequency vowel in English. According to Faircloth and Faircloth (1973, p. 18), it is the

eighth most frequent vowel in English. It also carries a moderate relative functional load.

According to Catford (1987, p. 89), the relative functional load of [ʌ] vs. [æ] is 68%, the

one for [ʌ] vs. [ɑ/ɔ] is 65%, and [ʌ] vs. [ʊ] is 9%. The second reason for studying [ʌ] has

to do with the fact that it is more prone to regional variations than any other GAE vowels.

For this reason, I contend in this paper that some of the poor intelligibility scores given

by intelligibility judges has as much to do with the judges’ own inability to perceive [ʌ]

accurately as with the inaccurate production by non-native speakers. Finally, [ʌ] is worth

studying because its F1 formant values often overlap with those of [æ] or [ɑ/ɔ] in L2

Englishes.

The paper is organized as follows. Section 3.0 provides the necessary background for the

instrumental assessment of intelligibility. In section 4.0, I provide acoustic data to

support my contention that GAE talkers and hearers do not perceive [ʌ] completely

accurately. It is customary in the acoustic phonetic study of vowels to discriminate

between adult females and adult males because of the significant differences that are

found in the laryngeal structures of the two genders. For this reason, the intelligibility of

[ʌ] in L2 varieties of English is divided according to the gender of the participants.

Section 5.0 focuses on the acoustic vowel space of the female participants, while section

6.0 concentrates of the acoustic vowel space of their male counterparts. For each gender

group, cursory explanations are offered to assess the intelligibility of [ʌ] instrumentally.

More in-depth discussions are devoted to how Mandarin females and Spanish-speaking

males produce [ʌ]. Mandarin and Spanish-speaking [ʌ] are singled out for extra scrutiny